A time for expert opinion

Nate Silver makes an appeal to favor experts over ideology. Excerpt:

3. I’m sorry, but somewhere between 99.9% and 99.999999% of us are severely underqualified to be making policy recommendations on this particular issue. And I’m certainly in the majority on this one. My anecdotal experience for the past several months has been that the more someone knows about the economy, the more they know (or at least are willing to admit to) what they don’t know. Anyone who is professing with certainty that this or that will work — nationalizing the banks, for instance — is an idiot.

4. So if I’m telling you to lay off the ideological smelling salts (not that you will) and that your ideas on policy are probably not contributing very much to the discussion (don’t worry — neither are mine) then what, exactly, do I want you to do?

What I’m asking you to do is to clear the playing field. This is neither the time nor the place for mass movements — this is the time for expert opinion.

Agreed.

(The rest of the post is really good, too)